Free Concrete Underground (2010) by Moxie Mezcal

raised voice, taking on an almost professorial tone. "People willingly give my company access to their information when they use our products. We take that information and use it to give them the best possible customer experience. I make no secret of my company's business practices. And I'm sure anyone who complains about the price of gas in an e-mail and then suddenly sees an ad for the latest hybrid car knows exactly what I'm doing."
    "Spare me the corporate spiel," I groaned. "What about the people that don't want you tracking what they buy and what sites they look at and what they talk about in their e-mail?"
    "Then they can patronize our competitors," he replied dismissively. "Or realistically, they should stay off the internet altogether."
    "Are you serious?"
    "Very serious," he replied, and I realized he was no longer talking to just me - the rest of the room was listening as well. "The web has truly become the great democratizer of information in the most literal sense of the word - rule of the people , plural. Information is no longer the sole property of any one person. The question isn't why shouldn't you have the right to keep things to yourself? It's why shouldn't your business partners, your employers, your friends and family have the right to know who you really are? "
    "I call bullshit," I said. "Even if you accept that argument, it's only valid based on the assumption of a social good. But what's the social good in all this?" I pointed at the monitors.
    "The same social good that exists in any real art - purification of the human soul. Hold a mirror up and make us confront who we really are."
    "Now I really call bullshit."
    Max laughed. "Let me put it to you this way - I put forth to you that the age of surveillance is only a symptom of the new hyper-narcissism that has infected our collective reality tunnels. We invite the surveillance cameras into our homes because they are proof that someone is paying attention to us.
    "Let me give you an example. You criticized my company for collecting users' personal data, but people are voluntarily and intentionally sharing the most intimate minutiae of their lives everyday, and they love doing. Even as we speak my phone is being bombarded by tweets, e-mails, blog posts, and social network status updates from personal and professional acquaintances. Privacy is passe; it simply no longer exists as a social value. No one wants to toil in obscurity. Fame has become the new social currency of the 21 st century. In the 19 th century the struggle was between the working class and the ruling class over the means of production. By the end of the 20 th century, the paradigm was made obsolete by new classes - the leisure class, the creative class, the consumer class. Now there's a whole new emerging class bringing another sea change, the celebrity class. Suddenly we have an entire stratus of people who are famous just for being famous. It doesn't matter if you aren't the most talented, or the most virtuous, or even the most beautiful, as long as people know who you are. We've built a brave new world where every man and woman can be a star."
    His eyes locked in on mine as he presumably waited for me to respond to the depth and profundity of his argument.
    "Jesus, are you still talking?"
    Max broke into a chuckle and threw an arm over my shoulder.
    " Brave New World , huh? That is the second Huxley synchronicity I've had tonight."
    " Every one belongs to every one else ," he quoted.
    "Whatever. I just want you to tell people that I didn't lie in my article. Help me take some private information and hand it over to the masses," I said, relishing the chance to throw his own bullshit back in his face.
    Max sucked on his teeth and made a disinterested expression. "I gave Lilian my statement, which she relayed to you accurately. I don't really have any interest in pursuing the matter further."
    I didn't let up. "Why did you give me your statement in the first place?"
    "Because, D, life